


Evidence of Things Unseen

by reserve



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Bigfoot - Freeform, Camping, Coming to Terms with the Past, First Time, Gay Porn Hard, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Paranormal shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:54:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25773163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve
Summary: Jonathan Toews finds Bigfoot.(Set in a nebulous, fictional post-season wherein maybe Bigfoot was the Stanley Cup all along.)
Relationships: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Comments: 12
Kudos: 109





	Evidence of Things Unseen

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic in 2018. I decided to finish it today in the tradition of “Gay Porn Hard” and using my stressed-out energy before big games to write. Many thanks to so many lovely friends who have seen pieces of this over the better half of two years.
> 
> Barely beta’d. We post like men.

O how, like always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep  
next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around  
you in an act of faith against the night.

—

Patrick is going into downward dog when he gets the phone call. He doesn’t like to take calls during yoga. He doesn’t usually keep his phone next to his mat. But when his cell starts buzzing against the polished wooden floor, he snatches it up so quickly he nearly falls on his face. The petite blonde next to him shoots him an annoyed look and Patrick whispers “sorry, sorry,” aspirated and half under his breath before scrambling up and away. 

He answers standing on the sidewalk outside the yoga studio, cupping his other ear to hear over the Loop traffic. It’s Stan Bowman and he’s sending Patrick to Vancouver. 

Well, not quite.

He wants Patrick to go further north. He wants Patrick to bring Jonny home from the rented cabin he’s apparently holed himself up in, as opposed to his regular cottage, or whatever the heck Canadians call summer homes. 

“This isn’t exactly public knowledge,” Stan says. “But you’ve gained a talent for discretion.” 

“Uh,” says Patrick. “I’m not sure that’s—“

“We’ll take care of your travel. Becky will come by tomorrow and pack for you, drop off the recommended gear. We want to make this as simple as possible.”

 _Gear?_ thinks Patrick. “Ok but.” 

“No ‘ok but.’ The team is _asking_ you to do this.” 

“Okay but.” Patrick swallows, persists. “Ok, but why me? I’m not exactly your outdoorsy type. My idea of camping is a rustic hotel. I’m not even—“ 

“He trusts you,” says Stan. Simple, convicted.

It doesn’t sound convincing to Patrick, and he slept in this man’s basement, babysat his kids. And he cannot fathom why he got tapped for this... mission. He snorts. “Sure, trusts me on the ice. Maybe generally. But doesn’t this sound like the kind of thing a mental health professional should handle? Or Duncs? Or even—” 

“It’s not a mental health issue. Just call him. Text him. You’re good at guileless. Tell him you want to help.” 

“Help with _what_?”

“Whatever he’s doing up there.” 

“Are you sure he’s not just fishing?” 

“Pat, I’m really not,” Stan says, uncharacteristically defeated. 

Patrick doesn’t have a lot going on in Chicago this summer. And he’s not due in Florida for training for another month. _And_ he’s recently single. He and Jonny used to spend time together in the off-season when they were kids. Codependent, lost without the team around to ground them during the long break between the end and the beginning. Maybe that was more him than Jonny, but Jonny was kind enough or smart enough to at least pretend he understood why Patrick at age twenty needed contact when they should have been sick of each other. Patrick supposes that he could detour north for half of April. He _supposes_ it wouldn’t be the worst decision. 

“Well?” 

“Fine. But I have no idea where I’m going or what I’m doing.” 

Stan chuckles at him down the line. His voice is fond when he says, “That’s never stopped you before.”

—

The front office gets him a chartered flight out of PWK in two days’ time and Patrick rings his parents to let them know he’ll be in British Columbia with Tazer for a bit. 

“All good, Buzz?” asks his dad. 

“He’s, uh, thinking of buying a place up there. A ski chalet or something.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wants me to check it out, so.” 

He can feel Tiki’s raised eyebrow over the wireless network before he says, “and you’ll be gone how long?” 

“Not too long.” Patrick refrains from throwing the _I’m-a-goddamn-adult_ hissy fit that he hasn’t exactly earned yet.

“Sounds nice,” his mom cuts in. They must be in the car together. “Say hi to Jonathan for us.” 

“Will do.” 

“Buzz. Don’t make—”

“ _Bye_ guys,” Patrick says, feeling harried. He ends the call. He doesn’t even look at the text his dad sends as soon as they’ve hung up. He texts Jonny instead. He calls. He doesn’t hear back.

The promised travel gear arrives the afternoon before his flight and Patrick waves Becky off without letting her touch his own shit. He’s spoiled but he’s not useless. He barely looks at whatever the front office sent, just adds some of his own clothing to his duffle, pulls out the closest thing he has to hiking boots, and wonders if Jonny is going to make him fish. Or hike. Or take pictures of him from behind for his stupid Instagram like he’s Beyoncé and Patrick is standing in for Jay-Z. 

He’s on a private plane out to Smithers, British Columbia, to the world’s smallest airport, before he realizes Jonny hasn’t texted him back. At least, Patrick thinks, barely able to hear his music over the propellers, he’s always been good at diving headfirst into the unknown. 

—

By the time they land, he’s been fidgeting for a solid twenty minutes and would maybe, _maybe_ , admit to being slightly nervous. 

Smithers is—well, it’s basically bumfuck nowhere with an Alpen theme. And April is definitely not warm. But Patrick is pretty sure a few guys who made it to the show grew up here; the Watson brothers, definitely. So that’s cool. And the mountains, snow-capped and rising up beyond the highway like a stark reminder of nature’s mastery over mankind, are fucking insane. It’s the closest thing he’s seen to the landscape in Switzerland, and while he definitely doesn't miss Switzerland, it _was_ gorgeous. 

Patrick takes what is possibly the only Uber in town up to Jonny’s rented cabin. Stan texted him the address before his flight and Patrick didn’t ask questions. Maybe he should have, but he’s always been too eager to please. He stares out the window at the light coating of snow and listens to his driver, Amabel, tell him about her kids as they get further and further from civilization. Patrick is pretty sure the last building he saw was a hospital that could have been mistaken for a big, old house, and that was half an hour ago. 

They miss the turn, and Amabel has to make a six pointer on a narrow two-way country lane to get back to it. Patrick doesn’t blame her; the pine trees are thick and obscuring, forbidding in their numbers. 

There’s a long gravel driveway leading to the property and he understands why he was picked up in a Chevy Tahoe once they’re rolling over it, tiny stones dinging the undercarriage again and again. He expected the wooded landscape, but it really hits him how alone they’re going to be once Amabel is trundling out of view, red taillights fading into the trees. Patrick checks his phone only to realize he has no service. No wonder Jonny didn’t text him back. The way his stomach flips is unexpected, and he shoves his phone back into his pocket with a grunt. 

The cabin door is unlocked, and Jonny isn’t there. Patrick takes a deep centering breath, puffing out his cheeks. This is totally fine. 

At least it’s a cute place—a big A-frame with a patio facing the forest—and not the lean-to it could have been. For all his talk, Jonny is still a professional athlete. He’s as accustomed to the finer things as any of them at this point. Patrick takes in the serviceable kitchen and its high counter and stools, the connecting living room (no TV, of _course_ ) with a cheerful potbelly stove in the corner, and—up a pair of steps, a slightly raised sleeping area around which someone, probably the owners, has strung up twinkly lights. There’s only one bed. It’s unmade, and Jonny’s things are strewn around it on the ground. Patrick’s not going to think about that just yet. 

The couch probably folds out. 

He leaves his Timberlands by the door, his duffle on the floor, and flops onto the couch. There’s a plaid blanket hanging across the back of it and he drags it over himself, curls up with his legs tucked close. It was a long flight, and he didn’t sleep at all: too busy vibrating with nerves he couldn’t place. Now all that energy seems to have evaporated and he’s stifling a yawn and drifting off when he hears footsteps, the unmistakable crunch of boots over leaves and snow. 

He can see Jonny through the front window in the waning light, carrying an armful of logs and wearing cargo shorts with hiking boots. He looks—good, from a distance, getting closer. He might be a little windburned; his cheeks are flushed red and his hair has grown out enough to cowlick up at the front. Patrick lets himself look. 

Jonny is humming quietly as he kicks his boots off against the siding. Patrick hears most of the logs land in the the rack he saw outside, one thump after another, and when the door handle finally starts to turn, his heart feels like it’s going to pound its way out of his chest and flee. 

Because it’s weird, that he’s here. It’s maybe really weird. 

“Oh, hey Kaner,” Jonny says, glancing at him before he stomps into the room in stocking feet and drops the remaining wood in the basket by the potbelly stove. Pulls off his parka to toss it carelessly in Patrick’s direction.

Then he turns. _Slowly_. 

Patrick tries to arrange himself into a casual position. 

“The fuck,” says Jonny. He rubs at his eyes like maybe he doesn’t trust his own vision. Then he blinks a few times, owlish and disbelieving, and looks like a grade-a doofus. 

Patrick bites at his bottom lip to keep from laughing. “Hi.” 

Jonny’s eyebrows go up. “Hi?” And the air-quotes come out. “ _Hi_?” Raised voice not good either. “What are you doing on my couch?” 

“Napping. Thinking about napping. And now I’m just hoping you don’t kick me out. Because I’m not sure I can get an Uber up here.” 

“What the fuck,” Jonny repeats. “When did you get here?”

“Like half an hour ago.” 

“What the _fuck_.” 

“You said that already.” When will he ever learn? “Nice place.” 

Jonny squints at him like he still can’t believe Patrick is actually there, sitting on his rented couch in his rented shack in his rented middle of nowhere. And he keeps staring as he walks over the fridge, very pointedly removes a Goose Island IPA, opens it using one of those metal wall-mounted bottle openers (the cap drops into a little tin on the ground with a _ping_!) and proceeds to drink most of the beer in one long pull, throat working through big gulps while he continues to stare Patrick down as though daring him to vanish into a puff of smoke. 

“Alright,” Jonny says, once he’s sighed deeply and set the beer down on the counter. “Why are you here?” 

“The, uh. The team said you might need some help. With—” he gestures at the room, and at Jonny. He’s not going to mention Stan. “That I could maybe help you, so. I can go.” 

“The ‘team’ said I need help? With what?” 

“You know,” Patrick says, consideringly. “No one said. I think I’m mostly supposed to make sure you come back to Chicago and don’t, like, become some kind of mountain man Sasquatch.” 

Jonny snorts. “You have no idea.” 

“So tell me?” Patrick pats the cushion, tries to look as interested and inviting as possible. He’s no stranger to working through Jonny’s reluctance to communicate openly. It used to drive them both crazy when they were younger and polar opposites when it came to processing just about everything. He was quick to react then, and Jonny’s default state was brooding when things went poorly. It made them oddfellows; somehow they met in middle, probably because they both discovered their tempers. “Come and tell me.” 

“It’s April 20th,” Jonny says, coming over to sit on the edge of the couch like he’s prepared to leap into a sprint. “You’d think a man could do what he wants with his off-season,” he mutters. Then, more directly to Patrick, and resolute: “I’ve given myself a month.” 

“A month to what?” 

“A month to find him.” 

“Find who?” 

Jonny narrows his eyes, his mouth pulling into an exaggerated frown. “Bigfoot, Kaner.”

Patrick busts out laughing before he can stop himself. Before he thinks he has to. “A-hah. Good one.” He slaps Jonny on the back, on the verge of breaking out the finger guns. “A+, very solid. I’ll put it on your tombstone.” 

“Kaner.” 

“Yeah,” he wheezes.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” 

He considers Jonny’s crinkled brow, the determined set of his shoulders. The somber way he has his hands clasped and whistles low. “God, I really wanted you to be joking.”

—

They end up hashing things out while Jonny gets a fire going in the potbelly stove, talking over his shoulder at Patrick, not even the slightest bit embarrassed about apparently going crazy. 

Patrick knew, he _knew_ Jonny was into aliens and all that metaphysical shit. That Jonny believed there were unquantifiable things about their universe, things they couldn’t possibly understand. And Patrick always _did_ enjoy _The X-Files_ when he got around to watching it. Which is to say, he’s not unaware that people believe in this stuff. 

He just hadn’t expected Jonathan Toews, of all people, to go Full Mulder. Honestly that seemed more like Duncs’ bag, if you were to ask him, which Jonny has not. Instead Jonny’s been going full-throttle about Bigfoots—

(“Shouldn’t it be Big _feet?”_

“No, and the First Nations’ term is actually Sasquatches.” 

“Wow, condescending much?”)

And how Bigfoot sightings often coincide with other instances of paranormal activity and isn’t that fascinating? And “I have a couple books here you can check out if you’re staying—”

“I’m staying.” 

“Right, so.” Jonny looks momentarily flustered and grateful. “Cool. Because now you’re here, it’s probably good. To have two people. Just in case.” 

“In case of what?” 

Jonny shrugs expansively and says, “Help me get dinner ready.” 

The couch is soft, and the room is cozy-warm with the fire going and Patrick is truly sorry to have to get up, but once Jonny is opening cabinets and poking around in the fridge he starts feeling like an even worse unexpected guest than he already is. He hauls himself up; considers whether this is a good opportunity to ask where he should sleep, since they’ve established that he’s staying, but Jonny keeps talking while they pull together a relatively average meal of rice pasta and vegetables with poached chicken. It turns out that Jonny has enough canned food, freeze dried fruit, and vacuum-sealed meat to last them _both_ the month that he intended to spend at the cabin. 

Patrick looks it all over feeling vaguely uneasy while Jonny strains pasta. This isn’t exactly the scenario he’d expected. A depression beard? Maybe. Red squirrel pelts? Possible though unlikely. A slightly manic treatise on the history Bigfoot? Not so much, no. He finds himself scowling at the contents of Jonny’s cupboards, churning the situation over in his mind. His presence may actually be the least weird thing about this. 

“What are you?” Patrick says. “Some kinda survivalist now? Is there a bunker out in Winnipeg with your name on the mailbox?” 

“A bunker wouldn’t _have_ a mailbox. And no.” 

“That’s not what I meant.” 

“I don’t have any guns, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not that kind of Sasquatch hunter. I’m more of a...a tracker.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Seriously,” Jonny says. “Those other guys have it wrong. Can you set the table?” 

They sit down to eat with a beer each and Patrick’s curiosity gets the better of him; because what else is new. “When you say ‘those other guys,’ who do you mean?” 

“Oh, uh,” Jonny says around a mouthful of pasta. “There’s a whole community of Sasquatch enthusiasts. Like I said, there’s books, and there’s a crappy T.V. show—” 

“Jeez.” 

“And like, so many websites. You’ve never seen so much green text on black backgrounds. It’s like 1998 on every one of those sites.” Jonny laughs at his own joke. “But people have different opinions. Most cultures have some kind of wild man figure, I mean, look at—”

“Joe Thornton?”

Jonny smiles at him and Patrick tries not to preen. 

“Seriously, though. People are always looking for something out there in the dark. Something like them but very much not. Which is probably why some guys kit out like they’re going to war—fuckin’ who knows why—and others track, like I said. No weapons, just time and patience. Sasquatch is big, but not mean.”

Patrick rubs at his chin thoughtfully. He must look skeptical because Jonny adds, “the Nlaka'pamux people call him the ‘benign faced one,’ I think that says a lot. And that name dates back to the 19th century.” 

“You’re a dork about this.” 

Jonny shrugs with both of their empty plates in hand. “It’s a good distraction. Something else to think about. You’re dismissed; you can go back to the couch.” 

“Yeah,” Patrick says, only a little bit irked about being sent away from the table like a child. “Yeah, I could see that.” He prefers to distract himself with golf, bad movies, a lot of physical conditioning, sex when he can get it. Jonny likes that stuff as much as he does, he knows Jonny does. But he could see, maybe, how another awful early exit might send a man looking for different answers. He mostly tries to focus on what’s next, stay consciously grounded because he knows he needs that when his life has less structure. 

Jonny joins him on the couch with another pair of beers after he’s done the washing up and they sit in silence for a bit, watching the fire crackle through the metal grate. It feels festive without the festivity, comforting. 

“Are there no Bigfoots in Manitoba?” he ventures, thinking Jonny should be able to do whatever he’s doing from his usual summer locale, thinking the picture isn’t clear yet. 

“Not really. Different province, different cryptid.” Jonny sounds matter of fact. Like this is obvious. Like Patrick should know this. 

“Do I even want to know what a cryptid is?” 

“A cryptid? Kaner, c’mon. A cryptid is like the Loch Ness monster or the Jersey Devil. Creatures that originate in myth and folklore. They’re not supernatural or whatever, just unproven.” 

“So what’s the Manitoban ‘cryptid’ of choice?” This time it’s Patrick’s turn to use air quotes. 

Jonny tilts his head, considering before he speaks. “Skinwalkers are old lore. Sort of a cross between witches and werewolves. Definitely not benign. Most people won’t even talk about them.” He looks at Patrick dead on and the fire lights up the smooth lines of his jaw. His eyes are so very dark. He would have been the worst kid to billet with. “Have you ever heard the story of the kids camping out on the planes? Sitting around in their trailer when they realize someone’s there with them who wasn’t before?” Jonny’s voice goes low and soft. “And when it gradually becomes clear that one of them shouldn’t be there, that one of them is _wrong_ , the panic sets in? Slowly at first, but growing. Maybe they’re all too fucked up on weed and booze to really think straight, but they all know, even the one who doesn’t belong, that something terrible—“

Patrick shudders. “Stop there. Enough said.” 

And the way Jonny laughs at him, at his dismay, mouth open wide, a hand on his stomach as he guffaws, is enough to make Patrick glad he wound up here, somewhere north of Vancouver, no matter how Jonny intends to use this time. 

“BC’s got nicer cryptids,” Jonny adds, like an apology. 

“You’re the only cryptid in these woods, Tazer. Trust me.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Save it. Wanna get high?” Jonny asks, smiling, conspiratorial, irresistible. 

Patrick doesn’t really do that kind of shit anymore, but—he’s not training. He’s on team-sanctiond “R&R.” And it can’t hurt, not out here with just the two of them. No cameras, no women, just the woods and this room. He shivers, for real this time, not just theatrics for Jonny’s benefit. 

“Yeah,” he says, soft. “Alright.” 

“Nice, I brought my PAX.” Jonny offers his palm for a high five but keeps smiling.

Obviously Patrick shades him.“Of course you can’t just pack a bowl like a normal person.” 

Jonny pulls a face as he gets up and heads to the bedroom for a minute, and when he comes back he’s holding a little mason jar and the vape he insists on using because it’s better for your lungs. 

“Here.” He passes it to Patrick. “Go easy though, this isn’t the stuff you’re used to.” 

Patrick rolls his eyes and brings the mouthpiece to his lips. He always forgets how to use these fucking things and coughs at the first pull. It makes him feel insecure and inexperienced, which makes him momentarily cranky. 

Jonny huffs a laugh and takes the thing away from him, puts it to his own mouth and Patrick watches him inhale. When he says “c’mere” and gestures for Patrick to come closer, too close, definitely too close if his first hit wasn’t already going to his head, Patrick shifts on the couch so that Jonny can tip their foreheads together, place his mouth very near to Patrick’s. “Open up,” he says, strained from holding the smoke in his lungs. “Go on. Breathe in.” 

It’s a shot-gun. Patrick has done this. He smoked weed like this for the first time. She was older and she’d taken pity on him back when he was living in Ann Arbor. Pulled him into a closet at a party, lit up a joint, and passed the smoke into his mouth and into his lungs. They’d ending up kissing when the high hit them both, buzzing into his bloodstream and filling in the vague ideas he had about girls and touching them. He remembers, with bizarre clarity, what she sounded like with her lips against his throat and his hand in her jeans. 

Jonny’s lips touch his and he breathes cooled smoke into Patrick’s mouth. Patrick draws it down, lazily aroused at the memory, at the proximity of another body. 

“Hold it,” Jonny says. 

Patrick exhales fast just to tell him to fuck off. Possibly to make him do it again. “I’ve gotten high before, you dick.” 

“Could’ve fooled me.” 

He watches Jonny take another long hit and waits to see if he’ll move in again, his heart rate quickening. He feels heavy, a little fuzzy. He’d forgotten, genuinely, what pot feels like. He drinks—he used to drink a lot—because it quiets the voice in his head that sounds an awful lot like his father, because it lets him push past the missing set of social skills a regular adolescence would have given him. Pot was never his drug, it made him too loose, too giving. It gentled him, and he already knows, in a fucked up way, that people see him as gentle. 

Jonny leans back in and Patrick meets him halfway, lips already parted, ready to take. He inhales when Jonny taps at his knee, and has to stop himself from doing something immeasurably foolish, like turning a nice gesture into a kiss. 

Time unspools. Canada always did have the good shit. 

The _really_ good shit, because soon they’re talking like they used to when they were road roomies, their heads tilted together on the back of the couch. It’s the kind of conversation Patrick associates with being high: half-sentences, too honest. He leans into it and lets his eyes unfocus.

The conversation between them comes in fits and starts, half-thoughts and trail-offs. Jonny’ whole body is an anchor holding Patrick to the couch; without Jonny there, he thinks he might just float away. 

They talk:

“What other people think of you. That’s, that’s all that you have. And if you can make them happy. Make them like you. If you can do what they want, then—” 

“Stop, Kaner. Stop.” Jonny’s hand is heavy on his knee. “ _Pat_ ,” he says. 

“I just.” 

“I know.” 

And they talk:

“Watch,” Jonny mutters, glum and a bit cranky around the mouth. “Joel will coach the Panthers to the final next year and I’ll spend the rest of my life getting asked if I’ve ‘bought in’ yet and keep missing top player lists.” 

“Fuck that. _Bought in._ We’ve— _you’re_ the greatest captain of the past half-century. This is known.” 

”Tell that to ESPN. To fucking _Reddit_. I dare you.” 

“I fucking _would_.” Patrick sounds sharply, embarrassingly convicted to his own ears. 

Jonny glances at him, all stunned eyebrows, before he repacks his PAX like he’s mad at it, shoving the crushed up bud in with his thumb and patting it down viciously. He inhales, croaks out a “c’mere,” and grips Patrick by the shoulder to drag him in and fit their mouths together again. 

And then again. 

—

It is very cold and very dark when Patrick wakes up disoriented on the couch, the scratchy blanket tucked around him in a tidy cocoon. He’s freezing, the fire long gone out by the look of it. He shivers and rubs his feet together to warm them. Lays there in the dark, maybe a little hungry, maybe a little adrift. The last thing he really remembers, aside from how much warmer he’d been with Jonny beside him, is eating nearly a whole bag of freeze-dried strawberries, mashing them into his teeth with his dry tongue, and snorting at the look on Jonny’s face. 

Fuck, is he cold. 

He tries to snuggle deeper into the cushions but he just can’t get warm. Before long, the obscene quiet starts to gnaw at him too. Isolated cabins seem like a great idea until you’re the only one awake and left alone in the dark, all the comfort seeping out into the dismal night. 

It feels like a terrible time for introspection, but Patrick finds himself preoccupied by the past. He’s never been...immune to Jonny. But maybe that’s not the right word for it. There’s nothing really diseased about his feelings. What once felt like an inconsolable, childish want he had to fend off—like forcing his hand away from the candy bowl back home, or saying no to the sixth round of shots—settled into a familiar, longstanding ache sometime back around 2013. A lodestar as much as a problem. 

They kissed once, drunk as hell, at nineteen. Tripped together onto the bed closest to the hotel room door, and managed to get half-way out of their clothes before Patrick was up, head spinning, to lose the contents of his stomach to the toilet while Jonny bitched on the other side of the door that he had to pee. 

Like they hadn’t just been making out, like Patrick couldn’t still feel the heat from Jonny’s body while he clutched the toilet rim and wished for death. 

They’d been kids. It hadn’t happened again, and things were only weird between them for a bit. Jonny by turns gruff and pathetically attentive to his needs, like he felt sorry for Patrick, or thought it was all his fault. A few hours ago was probably the closest Jonny’s been to him since that one time. 

He’s held himself back for so long. 

Where Patrick grew up people got married and stayed married. Moms didn’t really work and if they did it was more like Mrs. Driscoll who worked the register at the family pool supplies store and always had lollipops. Or his own mom, who’d answered phones and done paperwork at the county clerk’s office once his hockey really took off. There were Sunday suppers with the whole Kane clan if Patrick was home on the rare weekend, and somehow everyone’s parents seemed to be in a bowling league. 

His mom has these—platitudes, sort of. But they’re more like warnings. “Don’t fall in love drunk,” she’ll say, or “some people get married to get divorced.” Patrick doesn’t want the kind of life that leads to the latter, and he suspects he’s already victim to the former. Except, he didn’t fall in love drunk, not exactly. It was more like—

Where Patrick grew up there was always some kid whose uncle had become a priest and then a flight attendant. Or, in his own family, the second cousin who moved to the city, and came back around with the same best friend from college after grandpa died, only now they were holding hands. It’s not that Buffalo was old-fashioned, only that it hadn’t changed. And Patrick left. He became a visitor sometime between being a pre-teen and a relative adult.

He wonders, sometimes, if he’s not all that different from cousin Mary. Because he got out too, just not in the same way. 

Patrick huffs out a long breath. Enough, he thinks. _Enough_. 

—

Jonny wakes him up with coffee: black and very hot, exactly how he likes it. 

The weirdest thing about Jonny—ok, _one_ of the weirdest things about Jonny—is that he _evolved_ into a morning person. Like, he read _Seven Habits of Highly Effective People_ and took that shit to heart hard. The king of theory into practice if there ever were one. 

Patrick stumbles off to the bathroom with his mug to shower, piss and change without so much as a good morning, and when he comes back into the living room Jonny has oatmeal for them both, his own bowl mostly finished, and he’s rolling up a pair of sleeping bags. 

“Uh,” says Patrick. “You going somewhere?” 

“Eat your oatmeal,” Jonny says, like that’s an answer. “You’ll need it for the hike.”

“The what now?” He feels a surge of annoyance. It was one thing to nod along while Jonny talked about Bigfeet. It’s an entirely different thing to actually take the whole situation at hand seriously. He grabs the hot bowl and throws himself down onto the couch in protest to glare at the mush.

“You came up here to help, right?” Jonny points a flashlight at him. “Eat. Your Oatmeal.” 

Patrick does. Begrudgingly. He gets in three spoonfuls before he’s got his mouth open again. “Tazer, this is fucking stupid and you fucking know it. This is me level stupid. I’m the stupid one—I’m the kid who goes rogue in the off-season. Not—not _you_.” 

Jonny shoots him an incredulous look. It’s a look that says _how dare you talk about my friend Patrick like that_. He actually says, “You’re not stupid. And you’re not exactly a _kid_ anymore. You’re not running around writing checks your ass can’t cash. You know better. We both know better. We’re older now, which is why—“

“I prefer the term ‘elder statesman,’” Patrick cuts in. He refuses to acknowledge that he may have, from time to time, written several checks his ass couldn’t cash. That’s not exactly— “Age isn’t the point. You’re talking about maturity and experience like they’re the _reason_ everyone should be completely fine with you taking off after a—“

“Yet unseen—“

“Fictional forest monster. What I’m saying is that you’re working with a logical fallacy, man. You can’t say ‘oh I’m a grown-up so you can trust that I’m doing a grown-up, responsible thing.’ That’s not how it works. I’d know.” 

“How is that faulty logic? That’s exactly how it works.” 

Patrick groans. He rubs at the back of his neck and takes a moment to confer with his breakfast. “You do realize that this is the worst possible hill to die on? And that you could get hurt, or worse, that people might _think_ you’re hurt.” 

“I’m not hurt.” 

“ _Hurt,”_ Patrick says, meaningfully tapping at his temple.

“I’m not concussed.” 

“Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you are or aren’t. Sometimes it only matters what other people think.” 

Jonny rolls his eyes. Slow and pointed but his mouth does something shy and knowing. “I’m not dying on any hills. I’m fishing on one of the greatest rivers in my home country. I’m hiking. You’re here to escape the city for a bit.”

Patrick feels himself begin to relent. “Ok. Just—fine. What’s your plan?” 

“Well, I’d planned to leave at dawn but someone threw a wrench in that.” Patrick starts to protest but Jonny smiles at him, soft and fond. “And I’m glad,” he says. 

—

They set out around 10AM. Jonny has the tent, a sleeping bag, and most of their supplies in his hiking backpack and Patrick is stuck carrying a little handheld cooler, the rest of the food, a change of clothes for each of them, and his own sleeping bag. 

“No pillows, huh?” he said while Jonny was finishing up the packing. 

“It’s only a night, Kaner.” 

Patrick had managed not to grumble, but now that they’re actually hiking out, he’s considering a good grumble more generally. 

Their boots crunch over the leaves and twigs as they move through the woods on the outskirts of the property, heading slowly away from the cabin and into the unknown. Jonny is very heads-up, checking a compass and a battered map as they walk. Patrick recognizes the calm he wears. He’s deeply focused and trying to start a conversation would not go well. 

Instead, Patrick huffs, adjusts his pack, tries not to trip over a vine. He has more time than he wants, yet again, to consider what the fuck they’re doing. He shoved one of the Bigfoot books into his own backpack, which had already been kindly furnished by the Blackhawks, and had only a moment to look at it before Jonny was done using the bathroom and getting his own things in order. He wishes he knew even an inkling of why they are where they are, or what Jonny is really looking for. 

As they move deeper into the woods, Patrick decides not to think at all. The canopy overhead thickens as the trees do. Soon, light filters down to the forest floor in bright little points of light, a mosaic against the underbrush and moss. There's limited birdsong this early in the spring, but Patrick catches the occasional melodic titter. The air smells fresh, like pine and earth. 

It’s peaceful. He supposes he should have known it would be, but he’s always been more Cabo than Canyons. He’s not like Jonny.

Jonny, who has been humming tunelessly at his side for an hour now, and for half their lives. Jonny, who acquired a big stick along the way and who pushes aside an overgrown fern and gallantly says, “after you, Peeks,” with a dorky, self-satisfied smile before pretending to holster the branch like it’s his hockey stick. 

_Jonny_. 

Patrick cannot say he has a single regret for the first time in days. 

Before long, they reach a clearing. It must be midday judging by the height of the sun. Jonny pulls a couple of printed pages from his pack and consults his compass again. Patrick resists ribbing him about his orienteering hobby. 

“This‘ll do,” Jonny says after nodding at nothing of note, his mouth drawn into a considering, comical frown. “This’ll do nicely.” 

“Aye, aye,” Patrick says. He drops his cargo to the ground and stretches, arms high above his head. He’s broken a sweat, and his curls feel damp against his neck. 

“Stay here,” Jonny says. He’s emptying his pack into a neat pile, making room. “I’m going to get the makings of a fire pit together. Don’t move. Don’t follow me.” 

“Jesus, dude. Where would I go?” 

“People disappear in these woods,” Jonny says ominously. “Oh, here.” He hands Patrick a little device from his pack. “GPS tracker. I have one too.” 

“You think I’m gonna get abducted or something? Sex trafficked?” 

Jonny balks at him for a moment. “No, Kaner,” he says, slowly. “I think that supernatural events often occur in clusters and that locations where there are Sasquatch sightings typically have unexplained disappearances connected with them. There’s a whole—there’s a whole series of books about this, okay? Just stay put. Pitch a tent or something.” 

“I’ll pitch your tent,” Patrick mutters, because only Jonny can make him feel 18 again. “Fine. But you better come back.” 

“I will.” 

He watches Jonny head out the clearing, twigs snapping under his boots, still humming to himself. And then: it’s quiet, painfully, desperately quiet. Not even the fleeting hint of birds chirping remains, as though Jonny took all of it with him when he wandered out of view. It’s almost surprising that the sun still shines on. 

Patrick swallows against the encroaching spookiness of the silent woods. He reaches into his pack, pulls out the Bigfoot book he’d taken along, and settles himself down onto a pile of soft, dry leaves to read. 

__

There’s no noticeable change in the atmosphere, but before long, there are birds again and Patrick can hear the tell-tale sound of squirrels and other fauna moving through the trees. He shakes off the feeling that for a little while something truly strange was happening and puts the book away, sets about getting their little camp set up as best he knows how. 

He gets their tarp strung up between three trees in case of rain and sets a second tarp on the ground beneath it before going to battle with Jonny’s tent and the faded set of instructions. 

Did his parents ever camp? Were there trips he’d missed because of this team or that one. Had he ever been inside Grandpa’s RV with any intent other than mischief? He can’t remember, and he’s half-trapped in yards of taffeta and nylon, surrounded by partially expanded poles, when Jonny’s laughter freezes him in his struggle. 

“God, you should see you. I didn’t actually think you’d _try_.” 

Patrick scowls. “Well I did.” 

“I can see that.” Jonny snorts. He’s grinning ear to ear and his face is red, sweaty. There are at least two medium sized boulders in his arms. Kindling is poking out from his pack. “Leave all that and take this. Time to put your back into it.” 

Jonny holds out one of the boulders and Patrick goes to him, flushing at his words in spite of himself. Oh, he’d put his back into it, absolutely. 

“We’re going to make a circle, for the fire.” 

“You can make a fire here?” Patrick asks, doing as Jonny does and clearing away the leaves and debris to make a neat little circle of dirt. 

“If you follow the rules, yeah.” 

“Huh.” Patrick shrugs, struck once again by how easy it is for him to just follow Jonny’s lead. When has following Jonny ever gotten him into any kind of jam? 

They toil together—creating a makeshift fire pit, which Jonny completes with a bag of sand. (“You carried a gallon of sand with you? Jesus, man.”) Then they work in tandem to set up the rest of their camp before collapsing into the two camping chairs Patrick finds strapped to the sides of his pack. Of course the front office thought of everything. 

Jonny passes him his canteen and Patrick takes a long drink. He wipes his brow on his sleeve and realizes how good his body feels just from the hike and a little honest exertion. Nothing calculated, nothing planned, just the pleasant labor of the day. It’s good. He’s going to sleep well and that’s rare these days. The sun has traveled lower, and shines through the trees, casting long, leafed shadows around them. Soon, Jonny will get dinner started, but for now the cooler is open between them, and Jonny passes over his ubiquitous vape. 

Why not, Patrick thinks. Why not now, why not with one of the people he trusts most, further from reality than he can ever remember being. 

__ 

After dinner. 

After a starry-eyed lecture from Jonny about how aliens and the Bigfoot phenomena intersect. 

After Patrick yawns and doesn’t cover his mouth.

And very soon after the sun goes down, Jonny strings their cooler up into the trees and they crawl into the tent. Perfectly set-up, thank you very much. 

Jonny passes him the vape again once they’re settled, and their little lantern is all the light they have. Patrick gives him a look. 

“Are you trying to get me fucked up?” 

Jonny shrugs, arms behind his head, relaxed with his head against Patrick’s backpack. “I mean, you don’t get drunk anymore, but you do this.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It means.” Jonny turns on his side, head propped up on his hand, eyes dark as hell. “It means you’re so good.” 

“ _Good_?” 

Jonny scoffs. He gives Patrick his most charming half-smile, the mildly self-deprecating one that rarely makes an appearance. “Do you remember what it was like when we were both—“ 

“Trainwrecks?” 

“I hid it better.” 

“You still do.” 

“Hey!” Jonny smacks him on the shoulder and it makes Patrick grin at him, tongue tucked between his front teeth, full-wattage. 

“Tazer, man, you know I love you, but it’s true. It’s fucking true. Microdosing. _Bigfoot_. We were kids. We were kids and it was a hard time to be a kid in the show. It’s different, now. You know? I can feel it. I know you can too. Imagine how different.” He swallows, pauses. “Imagine how different it might have been. For us.” 

“Do you remember—“ Jonny starts. 

Patrick leans in. No need for smoke as an excuse. He’s never really needed an excuse to look his own ruin in the face and plow straight through. Why would he need one now? It’s 2020. It’s been over ten years since Jonny pressed him down into a hotel bed and kissed him until he lost his mind. 

Patrick leans in.

And Jonny kisses him. Kisses him, and kisses him. Cups his cheek, slides his tongue past Patrick’s lips and devours him. _Groans_ against his mouth, and then dives right back in for more, as though a second apart will mean another decade gone without.

Patrick feels something vibrating between them, energy and time caught up in their shared space: finally horizontal again, upsettingly on cold, hard ground, but Patrick will take it. He’ll take anything Jonny will give. He finally finds the power to get his hands into the action, gets his fingers at the waist of Jonny’s jeans and his other hand in Jonny’s hair and rolls them over so he can thrust his hips down against Jonny’s and make friction really happen. Jonny smirks at him when they stop to catch their breath. 

“You do remember,” Jonny says. And, “God, you still really want it, don’t you.” 

It almost sounds like a question. It almost sounds unsure. His smirk shifts into a different expression entirely. 

“No shit,” Patrick says. He touches their foreheads together. He wipes the mildly sick look off Jonny’s mouth with his tongue. Jonny’s hands are in his hair, Jonny’s legs are wrapped around him. He manages to get Jonny’s jeans off anyway, and then they’re briefs-to-sweatpants and it’s so much, it’s so very much. Patrick is winning. They’re both winning. Jonny under him is everything Patrick has ever wanted and his blood is rushing in his ears and suddenly he’s harder than he’s ever been in his life, and Jonny— 

Shoves him off. Jonny shoves him away and he lands in a heap on their sleeping bag pile. 

From a deep, long way off, a sound courses through Patrick’s whole body. He breaks out in goosebumps. 

“Did you hear that?” 

“Why do you think I—“ Jonny grunts. He’s up and digging through his backpack. He’s chucking things on the ground. A water bottle, a container that looks like Patrick’s high-end hair mask, their headlamps. When he turns back to Patrick he’s got a slim, small recording device in his hands and Patrick has shimmied under the covers. His boner is totally gone, which is a shame. Jonny grins. 

Maybe it’s over, Patrick thinks. Maybe whatever made the sound is already gone. He watches Jonny press a button and settle himself down cross-legged, hands on his knees, meditative. 

“Isn’t that the thing you bring to every team meeting?” 

“Stop talking,” Jonny hisses. “And yes. I like to take notes at home.” He scowls with his eyes closed, like Patrick has forced him to reveal something he didn’t want to, like Patrick is forcing him to keep talking. 

His mouth is still red and wet looking and Patrick wants to eat him alive.  
  
A grim, thundering yawp sounds from the distance. It reverberates through the emptiness around their tent. It almost seems to make the leaves rustle. Patrick clutches at the rumpled sleeping bag in a helpless gut reaction.  
  
“Holy shit,” he says, then quieter, “holy fucking shit, Tazer.”  
  
“Shhh.”  
  
The sound comes again. Louder, maybe closer. Jonny has a look of pure concentration on his face. He looks like he does right before he goes out on the ice. Like he’s considering doing something stupid for once in his stupid, generally well-mannered life.

He looks like he’s gonna to try to score on Bigfoot. 

“Don’t fucking think about it,” Patrick says. He releases the sleeping bag fabric to grab Jonny’s bare ankle, and hang on tight. Like that could stop him, like anyone could ever stop Jonathan Toews from doing exactly what he thinks should be done. “You’re not going out there. You’re staying right here.”

Jonny looks mutinous, probably on the verge of telling him to fuck off, but the next sound freezes them both in place and sends shivers up Patrick’s spine. Jonny must feel it too, because his eyes go wide and round. 

It’s a different—voice, if you could call it that. Crying out into the night, bright and joyous. A gleeful _whoop_. The first voice comes again, this time higher, almost teasing. 

And the second one titters in answer: a shivery vocalization, like laughter. 

It sounds like chirping, like hockey chirping, somehow. Which is, Patrick knows, completely insane but he feels somewhat beyond insane. Culture bound madness, he read about that once. Clearly that’s the issue here, except only they two are afflicted. 

The first voice replies, and it sounds so distinctly like a grunted, grumpy intimation of “you asshole” without any discernible words, that he snorts. 

“They’re talking,” Patrick says, wonderingly. “What do you think they’re saying?” 

“I don’t. I don’t know.” 

“Do you think they know we’re here?”

“Maybe.”

The deeper voice yawps again. It sounds further away, echoing. On the move. 

“I bet they’re saying you should get back over here and finish what you started. I bet they’re saying what a good lay I am.” 

Jonny rolls his eyes. “Even Mother Nature knows better than that. Alien forest creatures _definitely_ know better than that.” 

“Hey!”

“I don’t, though.” Jonny’s voice sounds intentionally sultry. “Can I leave the recorder on?” 

“Jesus, man.”

“Just in case,” Jonny says. He sets it down on the ground away from them, facing the tent flap and pushes half the contents of his backpack closer to Patrick, fusses around a bit more in the half-light. “You never know.” 

“Is this how it happens? You want my dick again because you’ve lost your mind?” 

“You’re an idiot, Kaner.” 

Patrick shrugs. He frowns. He can feel how silly it must look. He palms himself through his sweatpants anyway. 

“I only meant. You could have had it sooner.”

“Maybe I didn’t want it.” 

God, he’s so mean. It makes Patrick hard again. “Come here,” he says. He tugs down the sleeping bag and pats his lap. Pulls the fabric over his dick close enough so that Jonny can probably see that he’s hard, that he’s been given a generous share in this department, as though years in the same locker room hadn’t made that apparent. “Come over here.” 

Jonny puts down the headlamp he’s fiddling with. He’s in those tight little boxer briefs he’s always worn, and he crawls across the ground in their tent with his shoulders low and shifting. He’s looking at Patrick with the sort of intensity that Patrick has come to expect from him, and in the light cast off by their lantern his eyes look dark enough to be all pupil. Predators have eyes that don’t catch light. Patrick read that once. Somewhere. His heart rate picks up and his dick jumps under his palm when Jonny wraps a huge, warm hand around each of his ankles and squeezes. 

“You gonna fuck me, Kaner? Is that the plan?” 

“Maybe,” Patrick says, because it’s not hot to say, _I would settle for a quick handy. I would settle for kissing._

“Maybe,” Jonny repeats. He smirks. Patrick feels his cheeks heat up under that look. That painful, familiar, _knowing_ look. 

Jonny crawls all the way over Patrick until he’s settled himself over Patrick’s lap, his huge thighs bulging out on either side of Patrick’s. He doesn’t sit down, and Patrick’s whole body feels like it’s straining towards that contact. His hand is trapped beneath Jonny’s body at the wrist, tucked up in the space between them, and Patrick can feel the heat of Jonny’s fucking balls, the edge of his boxers, and his own erection. 

Will it have all been worth it, he wonders, if this is their end game? A rough but tender fuck on the ground in the middle of nowhere after a decade of misused need?

Jonny goes for the waistband of his sweatpants, to pull them down, to reveal his dick to the cold air. But it’s not cold inside their tent. Patrick feels like his skin is on fire, the places where Jonny is pressed to him feel like burning points of contact, embers between their bodies and their clothes. 

“I don’t have any—” 

“We don’t need it,” Jonny assures him. He holds up a plastic container, the stuff that Patrick thought was a fucking hair masque. 

Christ, but Jonny is smug. Exactly himself. Perfectly, impenetrably superior in a way that has been getting Patrick’s rocks off since he was eighteen. “Boarding school style,” Jonny says. 

“Fuck, you’re slutty, aren't you,” Patrick blurts. A long held suspicion slots into place, the way he imagines his dick will when Jonny gets them both nude from the waist down. It’s hard not to imagine Jonny doing this with someone else back at his nice, rich, religious boarding school. Seventeen, obsessed with hockey, and still desperate to trap someone’s dick between his thick ass like he was meant for it. “Fuck,” Patrick says again, this time weaker, more awestruck, a little bit sick with it. Maybe Jonny didn’t want this, but he did. 

He fuckin’ wanted it. 

“Is that. A tub of coconut oil?”

“It’s a healthy fat.” 

“Jesus,” Patrick says, and has to tip his head back for a second and grin at the tent ceiling. His hands dig into Jonny’s naked thighs. “You’re such a freak.” 

When he tilts his head back, more composed, Jonny has shed his briefs and is rubbing his thighs with the stuff. His cock is proud, jutting up from barely there pubic hair. He’s not cut, which Patrick knew, but now it makes his mouth water. Now he wants to touch, to pinch Jonny’s foreskin between two fingers and jerk him off like that. He wants that extra bit of skin caught in his teeth, rolled against his tongue. He wants it. 

“Watch,” Jonny says. 

Patrick can only reply with a groan, and he could never look away. He stares as Jonny palms himself briefly before he tugs down Patrick’s sweats with his clean hand and then slicks up his cock. It’s incendiary, it’s like nothing else Patrick has felt before. 

“Fuck, Tazer. You’re gonna kill me. This is gonna kill me.” 

“Good,” Jonny says, looking like he’s enjoying himself, like he’s found his pace. “Turn on your side. There you go.” He settles with his ass against Patrick’s front. Hooks a leg over Patrick’s two, and then drops it down again once Patrick gets the picture and isn’t too halfway to cum-dumb to manage the common sense maneuver of getting his dick as close to Jonny’s asshole as possible. “Go on,” Jonny says, humping back against him. “Lemme feel you.” 

They move together: slippery and hot, skin extra smooth with the generous layer of oil. It’s heaven, bliss even, to have his dick in the space between Jonny’s thick, strong thighs. Jonny is moaning for him, like he wants it too, and just as badly. Patrick puts his back into it, wraps his arm around Jonny’s waist to hold him close and sets a steady tempo. 

Jonny’s head lols back on his shoulder, neck at an angle that allows them to kiss sloppily and without finesse. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. How could anything possibly matter when Jonathan Toews is saying his name like a fucking homilie. Like a prayer. 

“I wanna be in you,” Patrick grunts. “Wish I could get you deep.” 

“Yeah,” Jonny mumbles back. “Touch me, Pat. Come on. Touch me.” 

He reaches down and takes Jonny in hand at the same time that Jonny’s arm comes up around the back of his neck. They are a barely human thing, together on the ground, in the woods: a new creature. Something just made and feral. He bites at Jonny’s neck, at his earlobe, tongues whatever he can as the feeling in his belly grows and grows, until it’s brighter than the lantern and the sun earlier, and louder and more joyous than the creatures they heard. 

“Fuck, I’m gonna—“ Jonny says, and Patrick replies, “do it, baby,” and lets himself go. 

__

“They’re attracted to pheromones,” Jonny says, after. His head is cushioned on his arms while Patrick traces lazy circles on his lower back. “It draws them out.”

“What?”

“They have a really good sense of smell.” 

“Are you.” Patrick can feel the indignity rising, even through his post-orgasm nirvana. “Are you saying you used me to find Bigfoot? You used me for _sex_?” 

Jonny frowns. It takes him at least six seconds to answer and his voice is placating. “No,” he says. “Peeks, no. I’m saying—“

“What?” 

“I’m saying I didn’t clean up. Myself. Because it may help us _find_ Bigfoot.” 

He’d watched Jonny rub the combination of their come and the coconut oil into his thighs. He’d thought it was hot. Like Jonny wanted to be marked by him, like animals might do. It’s less hot now; now it just seems weird. 

“Don’t be mad,” Jonny says. He reaches for Patrick to pull him close. Closer. He grips Patrick’s nape and brings their mouths together. Brushes his lips feather soft over Patrick’s, along his jaw, his cheekbones, before kissing him again. “You know what I’m here for.” 

Patrick, quite frankly, isn’t sure he does. But he lets Jonny nuzzle at him until they’re both drowsy eyed, until they’ve fallen asleep, tangled up together and spent. 

—

In the morning, Jonny is cheerful. Whistling to himself as he putters around their campfire. Patrick can see him through the tent flap, boiling water on their tiny canister stove for coffee, and nudging at something over the fire with his cooking tongs. The air is cold, it smells like spring. 

Patrick is sore, but he feels amazing. His thighs ache from working against Jonny’s wonderfully strong body, his pelvis too. It’s pretty fantastic. 

Patrick pulls on clean clothes and tries to arrange his haphazard hair into something presentable before just jamming a hat over it. Jonny looks up at the sound of the tent zip and grins. He looks half his age when he grins. 

“There’s bacon,” Jonny says. “And coffee soon.” 

“What about you?” Patrick asks, throwing the caution of one-time-only to the wind. “Are you a breakfast option?” 

“Play your cards right and I might be.” 

Patrick does not fist pump; but he thinks about it. That’s what being in your thirties is all about, he’s learned. 

They listen back to the tape Jonny took over breakfast, both of them turning beet red with embarrassment when the creature sounds give way to the sounds of them. The sounds of them fucking. Jonny makes a frustrated little grunt when it goes quiet save for him snoring. The creatures did not return. He turns off the recorder. 

“Wish we’d seen them,” he says. “Wish we’d gone further. Or that we’d set up camp somewhere nearer.” 

“There’s always—“ 

“It’s not good enough,” Jonny says. He takes a sip of his coffee like he’s mad at it. Gulps it down from the tin mug heedless of the temperature.

There are so many reasons to make terrible choices in the face of abject, relentless disappointment. Patrick knows them well. He’s well acquainted with the shape of defeat, with the sinuous curves of self-destruction. 

“Do you think,” he says, quietly, in the same tone his therapist uses, “that maybe part-way there will be as good as it gets for a little while? That part-way there is enough? Sometimes?” 

“Kaner, please don’t—“

“There’s always next year,” Patrick says, fiercely, feeling like they’re talking about the real issue for the first time. “There’s always another look.” 

“I’m not ready.” 

“Too fucking bad. You have to be.” 

“Have you ever wanted to just change? Who you are? Or rewrite…” he trails off. He shakes his head ever so slightly. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s ok.” His heart clenches up. “We should hike back to the cabin. If Bigfoot is out there, it’s not like staying there or here will make a difference.” 

Jonny smiles at him, a little sheepish, a lot pleased. “You read some of that book.” 

“Maybe.” Patrick smiles back. 

—

They spend another week in the woods. 

Patrick is going to miss this stupid cabin. They’ve fucked on just about every surface in it, but it’s time to go home. 

He watches the logs and the green door fade from view as Jonny drives them away, humming tunelessly along to what is mostly radio static but might be Ariana Grande. 

And maybe, just maybe, if Patrick sees two sets of eyes, too far up in the tree line, watching them go, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. 

There’s always next year. He has a funny feeling they’ll be back. 


End file.
